1.   In addition, it would allow individual salary increases and limit retirement privileges.

2.   Many entered the job market late and have fewer benefits, such as buyouts or early retirement privileges, and find retirement less rewarding.

3.   Miners voted Monday for a general strike at an unspecified date to defend their early retirement privileges.

4.   The government and the Solidarity trade union on Thursday signed an agreement promising to preserve early retirement privileges for miners, who suspended an underground protest a day earlier.

5.   The strikers were seeking the same retirement privileges that truck drivers and Paris transit workers have obtained through crippling walkouts.